Free Will Debate

                Many may wonder why we do the things we do; is it the free will that we possess or is it something else that is determining our actions. This argument is known as the free will debate. This is a debate that argues all the possible reasons why human beings do what they do. One of the theories is libertarianism, and a libertarian believes that human beings have the ability to control their actions and alter the way they live their lives thus resulting in them having moral responsibility over their actions. The next theory is hard determinism and this states that humans don’t have moral responsibility over their actions. They believe that our actions are caused by external causes such as past events or our environment that we live in. And the last theory is soft determinism. Soft Determinism is the belief that human beings have free will even though their actions are pre-determined by external influences.

From the above three theories, I feel that soft-determinism is more plausible. Soft determinism is a blend of all the three theories. It states that we do have free will and moral responsibility like the libertarians, and past events do influence our actions today like hard determinism. One event that we can look closely at is the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this situation, the government wanted to invade Cuba to stop the communism and to stop the missile they had from being launched. It was up to the current President at the time, JFK, to decide whether he wanted to follow through with the governments order and invade Cuba which might start another world war or come to some agreement with Fidel Castro and the Soviets. JFK had the free will to choose whatever he wanted and he chose to come to an agreement with them. This also plays on his moral responsibility to do what is best for the country. His decision is also based on the relations that the United States had with the Soviet Union through the Cold War and Cuba with the Spanish War. With the US rivals teaming up, they cause a threat to us also resulting in the decision that JFK had to make.

A.      Soft-determinism has more explanatory breath because it shows that we have the free will to make our own decisions and pre-determined events can effect why we do certain things, whereas Hard Determinism is only psychological events and past physical events and Libertarianism is based off spontaneous free will. There is more proof to Soft Determinism than the other two theories.

B.      Soft-determinism has more explanatory depth because it explains in greater detail why human beings behave the way they do. It shows that our free will and other events play a role in our decision making.  

C.      Hard determinism is simpler than soft determinism and libertinism because there is less factors on why people do the things they do compared to the others. In hard determinism we can evaluate the psychological events in a person’s life to identify why they do certain things unlike the other two where you would have to determine others definition of moral responsibility to understand why they do what they do.

D.      Libertarianism is more conservative than the other two because in society today people rely on their moral responsibility to make decisions for them. For example the President makes decisions based off what he thinks is morally right for the country.

1. Soft-determinism, Hard Determinism, and Libertarianism are the most plausible explanations of free will.

2. Soft-determinism has much more explanatory breadth and explanatory depth, whereas Hard Determinism has more explanatory simplicity, and Libertarianism is more conservative.

3. Therefore, Soft Determinism is the best explanation of free will.